After reading this article

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/27......pt=hp_c4

I began thinking what the younger crowd makes of mentalism similarly as to what millennials think of church. What do you think?

Has the perception of mentalism changed in your opinion due to age?

What is mentalism in the 21st century suppose to be like in your opinion?

My perception is that the perception of "entertainment as a whole" has changed.

If you compare television of the 60s and 70 to now... take note of the time between shot changes.... the time now is shorter. I read somewhere that this is due to the current generation getting bored (the brain not the person) more quickly.

We live in a time of "Instant gratification, video games, FX based movies as opposed to story based movies, etc.

I'm not saying it's good or bad... it just is.

Time is a commodity you are attempting to buy form your audience, and to them it is at a premium.....you are no longer selling your show. You had better make them a great offer for their time, or they will take their time and walk.

Just m2cw

Cheers
Frank

I think the above assumption about getting people back to church is wrong. You don't have to make it hip to get people back in... There are more and more atheïsts that leave the church. The christian church not admitting to it's own sins is also a factor why Youth is getting out of church.

I don't think this is about the church... but whether the genrational trend holds true to our art.

Let's not let this devolve into a religeous debate.

I think Frank is exactly right about the attention span. We won’t wait more than a few seconds for a web-page to load.

I think also the authenticity mentioned in the article is a key factor. They’ve seen special effects (practical and otherwise), computer graphics that look better than real, and green screens that can put anyone anywhere. Something more earthy, personal and in-your-face is what will move them.

They’ve also experienced in real life more than any generation before. (When we were kids, we didn’t NEED bike helmets, because we didn’t DO the stunts they copy). If they see something that appeals to them, they’re going to go for it. They’re not going to hold back and “be polite”. Putting the goods in their hands is a strong attraction.

So, I guess any one can see this however they like, but my thinking is that “real”, no props, unplanned (but not unprepared), straight to the point, and directly involving them (interaction, not just performance) is what mentalism today should look like.

And many here have already been doing just that. Those are the ones I’m watching!

I'm a millennial. If you want to know what kind of mentalism I like... the kind Derren Brown performs. If you have any further questions, ask me. (I'm a millennial from '87).

For young people today, the culture has changed. The way they live their lives has changed and the focus and structure of those lives is radically different to the world the 13 Steps was written in.

You cannot overestimate the extent to which this generation live connected lives - they live half in and half out of a virtual world where they expect to constantly access the thoughts of those around them via pervasive social media - when we read minds and tell someone their innermost thoughts the *social* transgression that this represented in Corinda's day is deadened. There is no staggering exposure of the person's secret innermost thoughts when they would have tweeted that in a few minutes anyway (OK, it's an oversimplification, but you get my drift).

The externalisation of the inner world that mind-reading represents isn't as alien as it once was - what we are left with is simply the power of our ostensibly supernatural mechanism of accessing that information. Don't get me wrong, people are still staggered by what we can accomplish, but IMO that aspect of it is lessened. Understand and appreciate this and find ways to routine around it, or meet it head on.

This is an interesting thread, I'm intrigued to see what everyone else thinks.

Phill

It's also interesting to note that in the article it mentions people going towards more "authentic" religions. It is for this that I thought maybe millennials like mentalism as a more "authentic" type of performance compared to the fast paced magic. It is true what Frank says that millennials, in particular, live in instant gratification and are bombarded with information more than any other generation. It could also be the case that these millennials might probably like slowed paced mentalism that looks real as it is a contrast to their life style. In other words opposites attract. Take for example Derren Brown's Oracle act. It's genuinely dramatic, intriguing, and to the point and I would assume that millennials would love it although its not faced paced and with special effects.

People talk about millennials and their short attention span and inability to focus for long periods of time, but I wonder if the people who apply that tag have ever marathoned an entire 20 episode TV series on bluray or sunk 200+ hours into Skyrim or GTA or whatever. The minds of generation Y may flutter, but once something has captured their attention they have staying power - how do those shows and games keep people's attentions for not just minutes or hours but for hundreds of hours? That's a massive question and the answer has taken decades to evolve - plot structures that lead people on (cliffhangers etc), psychologically enabling follow on behaviour (making sure that once one section is finished there is immediately the chance to engage with the next, or even overlapping loops so there is always an unresolved action), periodic benefits and levelling that reward people who stay focussed, etc - the list is very long.

I'm not saying we should be able to hold someone's attention for days on end, but if we could learn some of the tricks that can keep someone's attention for hundreds of hours, and apply them to our performances, surely we should have no problem keeping even a fidgety millennial audience on point for half an hour?

The quest for authenticity is not so much a generational one IMO, but a cultural artefact of the time we all live in - we are surrounded by simulation and illusion and people crave something real. I sequence from normal close up magic into mentalism by conspiratorially asking the group if they want to see something that's not really magic... something real. They are so ready for something that feels real, something they can mentally grasp as legitimate that it increases the impact of the material.

Just some more random thoughts.

Phill

I do Netflix marathons regularly. (have not watched "regular TV/Cable" since before thanksgiving)

Serial cliffhangers would be a great tool. Ed Fowler's (Carlyle's) "When you get home tonight" bank night routine is a running thing throughout the show. Great comedy usually cycles back around to a puchline/gag that was done earlier in the show/routine.

Another good one is a TOD that you have one missed at the end... but come back to it from time to time. Use the final reveal as your Encore (opps I still have one hanging out there... lets wrap it up) using CMR to make the connection... change the way you approach the audience member (how you read their mind... thoughts... body languace etc)

That's exactly what I'm talking about ref: unclosed loops. Great ideas.

Phill

I think the short attention span observation is absolutely correct. Recently I started watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie with my significant other who did not have the luxury of ever watching an episode. Each season is like 20 some-odd episodes long, and each one is 45 minutes. Nowadays you are lucky to get a season with half that many episodes, and they'll only be 20 minutes long. Something about a kid's brain, but man, I do not remember the show being so dark and tragic! Same thing goes for album buying. The majority of people now listen to the songs online, and might pay for the songs they like. The rest just get buried. The western world was totally onto PSY until he came up with a second song. Now nobody talks about the guy, and when they do, it's only about that one song.

Anyway, back on subject: I find that mentalism really does grab attention, and in a significant way. I think it is because, unlike 99% of magic, mentalism is right on the border of believability - especially if you attribute it to something other than witchcraft or psychic mindreading (body language, suggestibility, NLP, hidden patterns and meanings, etc). People are wildly interested in how their mind works and the weird phenomena attached to it. Tell someone you can bend spoons with just your mind, and the masses will call you on it and lose interest very quickly. Claim that through NLP and subconscious prompting you can convince Simon Pegg to forget the leather jacket and choose a red BMX bike instead, and you've got yourself a huge audience and a lot of fans. People *want* to believe that.

To learn about who Jesus was and get the real facts about Christ and the church he started is hard. But the results are life changing. Same as magic and any other discipline. It involves hard work. This is why the flashy videos and quick flicks color changes etc are more prominent. They are easy to watch and one can move onto other things like watching MTV and jersey shore and boo boo. What do you have after 5 hours a night of this stuff?

It's too bad on one hand that the simple things are sought out. But on the other hand for young people who are willing to pay the cost they will have less people in the world, the work force etc to compete with. Because, let's face it the hard work today as always still pays off.

The want it now generation may get what they want now but in the future they will be lost. The want it now won't last forever.

Who are are the performers in the Café that are looked to as the top and asked the most advice? Bob Cassidy, Rick Maue, Paulo Cavalli, and others. Why? Cause they have put in the hard work, the thinking, the research, the time. This is called paying the cost.

J